Q: I just want to spend time flying, lots and lots of time. Is it possible to work at my local airport and get paid in flying time, not money?

A: Marcus, it certainly doesn't hurt to ask! Working for flight time is about as old as aviation itself. I would recommend that you ask your flight school about doing this, as they are the ones renting the airplane to you, and the ones you will pay for that rental. See if they need help on line service, fueling, front desk, or in the maintenance shop. If they can do it, it would likely be in some form of credit on your flying account, equal to your pay otherwise, and you could then fly each time your account has enough for a typical one hour rental or training flight, for example. Good luck, and enjoy your training.

Q: What's flying corporate like, and is it a good career field to go into? Also what ratings are good to have before applying for a job?

A: Luke, Corporate flying is wonderful career. You will fly some of the finest equipment in the air. Your trips will be to cities served by both major airlines as well as smaller general aviation airports not served by the airlines. The constant challenge of going into different airports keeps you sharp.

Corporate pilots must be very flexible. Their schedules are very fluid and subject to change on a moment's notice. To be a corporate pilot you need to be somewhat of a jack of all trades. In smaller corporations, you will be responsible for all aspects of the trip. From planning the flight, booking ground transportation, onboard catering, overnight accommodation for the crew and in some cases passengers and coordinating maintenance when necessary.

In larger corporations, everything but the flight planning and actually flying the trip is done by other members of the flight department. Those situations are more akin to airline flying.

to the October issue of the AOPA AV8RS newsletter filled with information, expertise and hands-on resources to literally make your dreams take flight.

News for AV8RS living in the Fort Worth, Texas area!

AOPA and Youth Aviation Adventure (YAA) are sponsoring a free four-hour hands-on discovery program for teens ages 13-18 at Airportfest at Fort Worth Meacham International Airport on October 12, from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. This free program includes lunch and a commemorative t-shirt.

"Get Airborne: What You Need to Know" will offer the basics of aviation and learning to fly through eight dedicated learning stations led by industry professionals. During lunch, participants will be entertained by Luke Hickerson and John Ponts, from the TV show, Flying Wild Alaska, who will share their exciting flying experiences.

This program also satisfies the requirements for the Boy Scouts Aviation Merit Badge.

Registration is required and space is limited to 100 participants, so first come, first served. Register online at www.aopa.org/summityouth

Airportfest is free and open to the public. AOPA AV8RS also receive free admission to the 2013 AOPA Aviation Summit held at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

Meet Your New Teen Advisory Council

AOPA is excited to announce the appointment of the 2013-2014 AOPA AV8RS Teen Advisory Council (AATAC) members who will begin their year-long tenure in October. We received many great nominations so the selection process was a tough one. It's important to note that all nominees exemplify the dedication and passion that characterize our teen AV8RS community – and future leaders of the aviation industry. We appreciate the time, thought and effort they put into submitting their applications and hope they will apply again next year!

From geese to medical emergencies to snow stormsAirport operations job offers a lot of variety

Denise Kelley had planned on becoming a corporate pilot, but soon realized that flying as a career would take the fun out of being a pilot for her.

Instead, the private pilot found a different aviation career a better fit. Kelley is an airport operations supervisor at the Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wis., where she is responsible for FAR Part 139 compliance and inspection, emergency response, airfield and terminal inspections, airport security inspections, wildlife mitigation, and much more.

It's the variety of the job that she enjoys. "Every day is different," Kelley says. "You don't have to sit in an office every day, all day."

Meet AOPA AV8R, Spencer Rice

Spencer Rice isn't afraid to ask questions and he knows how to be persistent. It's those two qualities that help explain why the 15-year-old from Portland, Oregon is not only a student pilot, but also building an airplane from scratch.

Spencer says he has been interested in aviation his whole life. But an EAA Young Eagles flight when he was 11 really sent that interest soaring.

"It was an awesome feeling to take off..." he recalls. But just as awesome was learning that he could take as many Young Eagle flights as he wanted.

Want to be featured in the AOPA AV8RS Member Profile Column? Email av8rs@aopa.org for an application!

Brian Binnie: Test pilot turned astronaut

As a test pilot, Brian Binnie doesn't have an ordinary day on the job. But one day stands out as extraordinary in his career. It's the day – Oct. 4, 2004 to be exact – that he flew SpaceShipOne and became the nation's 435th astronaut while winning Scaled Composites the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

Binnie said it wasn't advertised that he would be the pilot for the second flight. "It was the way Scaled did business; they didn't put test pilots out there in the media."

Each flight test had a gremlin or detail that the group hadn't previously appreciated or understood, he said. "I had no reason to think this flight would be any different. There was a lot of apprehension on my part..."

From the weather, to instrument failures or avionics problems, Binnie said a variety of events could have scuttled the flight that had been in the making for three years. But everything went as scripted.

Lawn chair balloonist gets stuck in tree

Joe Barbera didn't "imagine" himself stuck in a tree. Yet that is just what happened hours after the Washington state man sat back in his lawn chair contraption, attached to 80 helium balloons, and lifted off.

The Columbian reported in late June that Barbera flew as high as 15,000 feet in his lawn chair aircraft he called "Imagine" before landing in a tree, perched about 40 feet in the air.

"I couldn't have asked for a better tree," Barbera told The Columbian. "The craft was suspended upright in an amazingly stable posture," he said. However, the height was "too far to jump and too far to fall."

Futuristic high-speed Hyperloop would allow travel on air

Forget about trains, planes or automobiles. If Elon Musk's idea comes to fruition, you could travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 30 minutes, all thanks to the Hyperloop, a $6 billion high-speed transport system that would move people in pods through tubes at speeds up to 760 mph.

Musk, CEO for Tesla Motors and SpaceX, posted his proposal in August on Tesla's blog. Since then, the idea has gone viral.

"The Hyperloop (or something similar) is, in my opinion, the right solution for the specific case of high traffic city pairs that are less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart," Musk writes in his 58-page proposal. He suggests mounting an electric compressor fan on the nose of the pod that actively transfers high-pressure air from the front to the rear of the vessel. "This is like having a pump in the head of the syringe actively relieving pressure," he writes, noting it would also simultaneously solve another problem – how to create a low-friction suspension system when traveling at more than 700 mph.

This summer camp is an aviation adventure

What did you do last summer?

No, it's not the topic of your latest English paper. But if it were, 24 Albuquerque middle and high school students would definitely have something to write about after participating in the Double Eagle Aviation Adventure summer challenge.

Created by EAA Chapter 179 in Albuquerque, DEAA gave teens an opportunity to learn about aerodynamics, flight planning, aircraft instruments and systems, aviation-related careers and more.

Joyce Woods, DEAA director, said this is the first year the chapter put on such an event. But it was based on a similar program by an EAA chapter in Michigan where she once lived.

Woods said the program was created with high school students in mind, but they had several students in middle school and one high school graduate participate. The students varied in their skills and abilities, from no aviation background to having already taken flight lessons and soloing in a private plane.

A trip to remember

As an airline pilot for U.S. Airways, Lou Panuski has seen America most often from 35,000 feet. So when he and son Chris were brainstorming ideas for a trip to celebrate his acceptance into the U.S. Naval Academy, it's no surprise on what they selected – a trip across the United States in their Piper Saratoga.

"I really gained an appreciation of the country, and it was good to see different parts of the country that I had never been to before," Chris says of their June 2013 trip that covered 4,455 nautical miles. "Dad had flown over these places thousands of time, but this time he was able to see it from a different perspective."

Chris says they created a rough outline of their itinerary a couple months before they left. "But my family is very spontaneous," he says. "The day before we'd decide what looked good and just go."

Oct. 1, 1958 – NASA formally opens for business. Its first administrator was T. Keith Glennan, the president of Case Institute of Technology and a former member of the Atomic Energy Commission. (Left to Right-Glennan, Dryden, Horner)

Oct. 3, 1967 – The X-15 was launched Oct. 3, 1967. X-15 was the first rocket powered aircraft to reach the edge of outer space. The knowledge retrieved from the X-15s mission helped to develop programs for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo piloted spaceflight programs as well as the Space Shuttle program. The program's final flight was Oct. 24, 1968. To this day, it still holds the official world record of fastest speed ever reached by a manned aircraft.

Oct. 4, 1905 – Orville Wright became the first person to fly an airplane more than a half hour. He kept up the Wright Flyer III for 33 minutes and 17 seconds and flew nearly 21 miles. The next day, Wilbur flew 24 miles in 39.5 minutes, and on Oct. 9, he wrote to the Secretary of War, offering to sell the world's first practical airplane.

Oct. 4, 1957 – The Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite that was nearly 23 inches wide and weighed only 183.9 pounds. While it only took Sputnik 1 hour 38 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path, its launch marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race.

Oct. 11–22, 1968 – Apollo 7 launches October 11,, 1968. Apollo 7 was the first manned mission in the U.S. Apollo space program and the first manned U.S. space flight after a cabin fire killed the crew during a launch pad test in '67. Apollo 1 was to have been the first manned mission. The crew, including commander Walter Schirra, command module pilot Donn Eisele and lunar module pilot R. Walter Cunningham, also became the first astronauts to drink coffee in space and experience head colds, as well as the first to have their mission broadcast live on network television. Apollo 7 landed on October 22, 1968

Oct. 14, 1947 – Capt. Charles E. Yeager, U.S. Air Force, became the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound. Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket-powered research plane, nicknamed "Glamorous Glennis" after his wife, faster than the speed of sound at Muroc Air Force Base, Calif.